Israeli cousins jailed for supporting IS, planning attack
Nazareth court hands defendants sentences of 30 and 36 months after they confess to attempt to join terror group in Syria
The Nazareth District Court on Monday sentenced two Israeli Arab cousins from northern Israel to multiple-year jail terms for supporting the Islamic State jihadist group and planning to carry out attacks in Israel.
Muhammad Omar Bader Hassan, 23, was sentenced to 30 months behind bars, while his cousin, Ahmad Talal Ahmad Saidah, 20, was handed a three-year sentence.
The cousins had confessed to plotting attacks after their arrest last November. According to court documents, Hassan and Saidah told investigators they had intended to join the terrorist organization’s war effort in Syria, but upon hearing the stories of refugees fleeing the area, they changed their minds mid-journey and returned home to carry out an attack in Israel instead.
Hassan and Saidah confessed they planned to carry out a shooting attack at the Golani Junction in northern Israel, as there are often large concentrations of soldiers there. Saidah also attempted to purchase a gun in order to carry out the attack, according to court documents.
Judges found the two guilty of “supporting the Islamic State, contact with a foreign agent, conspiracy to commit a terror attack,” along with some lesser charges.
Dozens of Israelis have already been arrested for attempting to join the Islamic State or supporting the terrorist group.
In September five Israeli Arabs from northern Israel were sentenced to multiple-year jail terms for joining IS and plotting an attack.
In July two Arab men from northern Israel were charged with supporting the Islamic State, with each of them separately making plans to join the jihadist group in Syria. In that same month, an Israeli Arab mother of five was sentenced to 22 months in prison for trying to join the group in order to teach jihadist ideology.
In May, Hamis Salameh, 21, from Ramle, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for trying to join the Islamic State in Syria. In April, Amin Snobar, 24, from Kafr Yasif in the Upper Galilee, was sentenced to five years in prison after he traveled to Syria to join the extremist al-Nusra Front and fight against President Bashar Assad’s regime.
The Shin Bet domestic security service believes that more than 40 Israeli Arabs have joined the Islamic State group in the last two years.